


All That Crumbles Is Not Dust

by lucius_complex



Series: XV [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Loneliness, M/M, Rebirth, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 04:26:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3236183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Loki can do is wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Consider this short story a guilty offering for not having posted in so long. I'm still working on 1001 Tales, but admit it will take some time as I wish to finish it before I resume posting. I can only thank you for waiting for me. :)

**All that Crumbles is not Dust**

 

 

_A fool I was to sleep at noon,_

_And wake up when the night is chilly_

_Beneath the comfortless cold moon_

_A fool to pluck my rose too soon_

_A fool to snap my lily_

 

 

 

He had not meant to give up, not really, but it had been an age, even by a god’s standard. An age in which Loki had walked the lengths of the earth enough times to have covered the distance from here to Sector 17.

He had not meant to give up, but it had been for so long a hopeless walk. Still he persisted, for at least it had been something to do during the long, indeterminate years between waiting and –

-

Truly, he’d not meant to give up.

He’d not meant to nod off either in one of the abandoned galactic warehouses which had once been a great American city. He’d meant only to escape temporarily; to seek the shelter of silence for a few years away from the ceaseless interplanetary encroachment of _more_ humans and Reshtihs and elves building settlements, prisms, spaceships that blotted out more and more of the evening skies.  It had taken several centuries of stoicism, but finally even Loki had caved and the din of building, of trade and barter and war and birth had driven him _here_ , into the desolate arms of a long-forgotten and dead human city, its abandoned buildings and lands long cordoned off for radiation.

It was a good a place as any for a forgotten god to come to sleep away the next few decades. Pre-chance with luck, to die.

He'd come for death or oblivion, whichever came first, so naturally the long dead Norns would have it otherwise; and just as Loki finds his weary body finally settling into a semblance of comfort and sleep on top a wooden pallet, he finds as well the glare of a torchlight pointed into his face.

Then, the warning click of an activated trigger, and a voice that _shakes_ him - shakes him to the very bone.

*

 

‘There’s a gun pointed at your head so I wouldn't make any sudden movements, buddy.’

Ah. _Ah._

It is always a marvel, how well he remembers that voice, its low pitch now once again smoothed over by youth. A voice that is never the same, yet forever the same. Loki closes his eyes, squeezing out involuntary tears. No, he would not move. Not for all the apples of Iddun, not for all the forgiveness found in heaven.

He must take too long to respond because the voice speaks up again, a little more truculent. ‘You hear me buddy? Or are you dead from radiation already?’

Finally, _finally_ does Loki dare to open one eye. He kens little in the gloaming, save for a slim figure standing behind some shelves, aiming a nano-rifle at him.  He can barely make out the colour of the boy's tunic but even so the pain of seeing him in the flesh again is searing. 

The boy raises the barrel of his gun again, a curl of suspicion deepening his voice into a growl. ‘I’m going to count to three. One-‘

Loki bites his tongue, swirling the metal tang of blood in his mouth to work his parched lips. His voice, so long unused, raspses and crumbles like dried leaves between them.  

‘Please, my name is Loki and I mean you no harm. Do not shoot.’

*

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

**All that Crumbles is not Dust**

 

2

 

‘You know, you never used to have such silent feet.’

There is a brief pause as the boy processes Loki’s cryptic greeting. The torchlight-drone beside him hovers higher up, casting whirling shadows across the pallet strewn floor.

Loki watches as the boy moves forward on soundless boots, drinking in the plasma-green eyes and unruly sable hair he now sported. He wore a standard skin-tight radiation suit and over it, a defiantly old fashioned motoring jacket. He is remarkably young, and even more remarkable – yet unmarred by radiation, save for abnormally large pupils and a few flecks of yellow in his eyes that glimmers in the darkness.

Born poor this time, then. Not ill, but almost certainly contaminated beyond even Loki’s ability to heal. Between the harsh rotating swaths of light and shadows Loki can see that he is whiplash thin, with limbs as thin as the rifle in his hands.  

At least this time the boy is human. Oh, so _very_ human.

His voice, dripping youth, rings with a false and despairing bravado. ‘I’m going to count to ten and you’re going to explain how you broke in here, alright? And then you’re going to hand me your backpack and empty out your pockets.’

Loki shakes his head wryly, partly to hide his own shakiness. ‘Ach. You mean to rob me.’

The too-thin shoulders shrugs inelegantly.  ‘Ain’t a greeting call, buddy. Man’s got to eat.’

Except Tony is no man here, not in this life - just a hungry, drifting boy doomed to waste away in the squalor and poverty of the current rein.  Doomed to die in shadows, sick and angry and impoverished, or be put down like a dog in the streets for crimes of hunger or passion.

‘Hey what’s wrong with you? You sick or something? What’chu infected with?’

He should be crying, Loki thinks as he continues this helpless and detached cataloging. He should weep from joy and sorrow both. He should fall to his knees and thank the Norns for centuries of waiting, finally at an end. He should whisper spells to penetrate the boy’s consciousness and possess him, that he may follow Loki forever and never leave him again.

He should kill them both, so that the hand of the hour could finally move from its stuttering space.

Instead Loki struggles to sit up, to draw in the long, sweet breath of a life renewed, savoring the heartbeat thudding against his ribs like a whiplash.

‘At this juncture I have little to steal from, but everything that is mine has always been yours.’

The boy frowns, unnerved by this candor. ‘I don’t _know_ you.’

‘You do,’ Loki tells him patiently. ‘Although I grant it was a long time ago. Does your memory not quicken at the cadence of my voice? Am I not familiar?’ He watches the flashes of confusion and disbelief cross his brows.  

‘You’re trespassing on my father’s property. _Tell me who you are.'_

And so it begins.

‘We both know your father is dead.’

The boy gasps and stumbles back a step. Loki allows his eyes to skitter away and compose himself. He knows that the boy’s father would be dead long months before. Perhaps years. Somehow that was always the case regardless of the circumstances of their meeting.

There was always a hole already carved into Tony’s heart by the time Loki found him, be it figurative or literal.

 

*


	3. Chapter 3

 

**All that Crumbles is not Dust**

 

_My garden plot I have not kept_

_Faded and all-forsaken_

_I weep as I have never wept_

_Oh it was summer when I slept_

_Its winter now I waken_

 

3

 

It had never been a certain thing, these sightings of his beloved. There had been centuries – lifetimes – that passed, without Loki once having lighted eyes on Tony Stark.

It wasn’t that he’d stopped looking. Loki would _never_ stop looking. The fear was always present, that Tony would live and die in some remote corner of Midgard, unaware and indifferent.

Overlooked.

This life of empty treading and anxious pursuit hadn’t always been so. There used to be a time when the reincarnations would occur back to back; with little disruption and even less difficulty. All Loki had to do was wait for Tony’s wits to sharpen until they could match each other, blade for blade.

In the old days, all Loki had to do was call Tony by name, and he would _remember_.

Sometimes they were allies, and sometimes enemies. Always they were lovers. And then things became difficult.

Each subsequent cycle of rebirth had taken longer and longer before the wheels of fate clicked back into place – the changes indiscernible at first, and Loki himself a youthful , trivializing fool then as well, too blasé and self-absorbed to notice the years of parting that stretched first into years, then decades. He had still enjoyed his galactic travels then. He had still been ever-concerned with the shifting of politics and power. And then one day he had looked up and noticed that the years he lived apart from Tony doubled the years they lived together.

And the fear had crept into his heart then, and never left.

*

The boy at least, is canny enough to befriend him, even if he does not believe a word Loki says. Loki is soft spoken and courteous, but also instantly proves himself strong and deadly. Amenable to suggestions and willing to take any number of instructions – within limits.

The boy ends up taking Loki home with him, albeit at the unfriendly end of a gun. He _does_ take all of Loki’s money and possessions away, narrowing his eyes at the baffling ease in which his new ‘friend’ relinquishes his worldly possessions.

Loki lets him stew in the mysteriousness of it all. It matters not to the god, who has played this game of introduction and re-introduction enough times to know that seldom is anything as unbelievable as the truth .

It takes him a week to find out that the boy’s name in this life is Seeker - a common enough name for the street boys that make a living as runners for decent folk and unsavory factions alike. It takes him a month to discover the torture scars decorating Seeker’s back and hips like scratches on a tree bark. Another month passes before the boy allows Loki to touch the miniscule rings of burnt flesh branded high on his forehead, carefully hidden beneath a nest of tangled hair.

Altogether it takes six months for Loki to find the perpetrators, one by one.

The camarilla henchman who’d applied the electric burns, Loki leaves for last. He jams the same electric rods that had been used on Tony into the man’s eye sockets and turned the dial as far as it would go. Then he sits on a stool and whistling an ancient lullaby, begins to skin the screaming man alive.

*

‘Do you still not remember me?’

Seeker simply stares at him. ‘You’re barmy, man. Bonkers.’

 


	4. Chapter 4

**All that Crumbles is not Dust**

 

4

 

Bit by bit, they carve out a reputation for ruthless speed and efficiency.  A niche for themselves, amidst the sprawling cartels and lobby groups with their sharp eyes and acid smiles.  A temporary haven within the forgotten caverns of a sprawling city, treacherous but comfortable.

Loki expands the nature and scope of their runner’s errands, keeps them on the knife’s edge of balance in all their dealings; dangerous enough to be of use, pared down enough not to pose a threat to any one of the fractious mobs currently ruling the streets. They ferried chemicals, carried out minor assassinations, ‘acquired’ blueprints. As word of their utter neutrality – an astonishingly rare commodity in this cut-throat world – spreads, so does the grudging respect accorded them, as one of the few whose actions could not be threatened or bought.

Seeker finally grows some flesh on his bones. He would always be small – the better to slip undetected into the spaces of others – but at least he would survive the harsh environment of the day. They had money now, enough for trifles – enough for medication to aid sleep, injections to keep the radiation at bay.

Loki continues to keep to himself, silent and alert despite the lull. Dark are the days, and he knows they will grow darker still. The boy made a few desultory attempts at drawing him out, but his heart was never in it. Tony’s once fierce spirit, that bright, incorruptible flame which had once captured the heart of a god- is sullen and banked here, smothered away long years before Loki had reached him.

Once the god had realized he had been too late; mouth turning to dust as he watches the boy – Seeker – _not_ Tony, shoot a man between the eyes without flinching, he pulls away; not far enough for true detachment, (there is _no_ true detachment) but not so near as to cut his heart open anew each day of their acquaintance.

And so they circled round as meant to be, but without meaning. Loki’s grief remains fresh but silent, never leaving his knotted throat, and Seeker continues to stare with a puzzled, uncomfortable frown at Loki’s presence in his life – inexplicable, nebulous, _guilty._

Once the boy had asked him about his home, and in a moment of weakness and longing he had spoken of Asgard, long turned to dust; his own children dead or forgotten.

‘Asgard?’ the boy scoffs. ‘Pretty myths of gods and fairy tales.’ In the flush of dawn, his radiated eyes light up like the golden city itself shines from those orbs, and he is _so_ beautiful. So beautiful and so _near_ , it is all Loki can do not to clasp him near, not to shake the small, battered body and scream  – _why do you not know me? Why do you not remember?_

Seeker’s face always turns taunting whenever he catches Loki staring at him. ‘See something you like?’

Loki looks away first, as always, and Seeker sneers his contempt.

‘Whatever, homo. Just make sure you don’t touch me.’

He remains in the shadows, watching the boy stalk angrily away calling to his toadies. They would go to the chemical bars, to couches laid out like coffins and drips that induced bliss or arousal or peace of mind – whatever the emotion craved, it could be purchased.

Asgard’s time has passed, Loki knows. As has his own. It wasn’t _gods_ this brave new world needed to take the pain away, but drugs.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**All that Crumbles is not Dust**

 

5

One of the first thing Seeker does with his newfound wealth is buy himself a girlfriend, a thin, saucy, dark-haired harridan with a temper to match his own. She’s ten years older than the boy, passes herself off as twenty-three, and demands to be made partner. She instantly recognizes Loki as a threat and attempts to get rid of him from the moment they lay eyes on each other.

She fails.

Loki ignores her easily, especially once Seeker breaks faith with her and starts bringing home other women; night-walkers who gawk at Loki’s fluid, incongruous presence midst the shambles of the poverty-ridden souk where they make their office.  

‘Say. How’d you afford someone like that? Creepy fuck, ain’t he?’

‘He’s just my bodyguard,’ Seeker mumbles, carefully avoiding his gaze as he tugged the woman inside. ‘Come on.’

The door slams behind them.

Loki drags his fork through the spongy remains of his cup noodles and listens to the sounds of their lovemaking – if such acts can ever deserve the name – moaning and thumping through the thin office walls.

Somewhere in the apartments above him, a clock screams.   

*

For a time he allows the boy to order him around like a dog – attends to a series of increasingly absurd errands, guarding trite parcels or people, taking out the trash. Little truly bothers him, although Loki is well aware his old self would have been chagrined. He has long ago ceased to account for pride: little enough of it is needed when alone, and Tony, whatever his age or circumstance, had always been born with pride enough for them both.

He is so desperate to prove himself. A trait that Loki once knew well.

Seeker does not know when to leave well alone and does what he can to goad Loki into lust or violence, shattering bottles of expensive alcohols over the railings when he fails. The rest of the boy’s time in-between jobs he occupies by fucking his bevy of lewd, giggling girlfriends over every surface of their office – regardless of whether Loki was present or otherwise -and racing drones with his newly acquired, drug-addled friends.

Loki doesn’t stop the rampant stealing and mishandling of their earnings, but he breaks one the night walker woman’s fingers and shaves her head when she attempts to pour a sleeping drug into Seeker’s drink. Over her screams, he promises many more to come.

She disappears a week later after cleaning out their not so secret stash, word gets out, and Loki gets into his first physical scuffle with Seeker.  The boy – man now really, looks constantly troubled of late; weighed down by cares and an anger he refuses to share, so Loki beats it out of him by blocking the boy’s punch and cuffing him in the neck.

The tussling ended abruptly when Seeker is caught in an unforgiving headlock and yells out:

‘You could just get laid man, you’re so uptight. Get yourself a fellow and bugger it off!’

Amazed, Loki finally lets him go to throw his head back and laugh, perhaps for first time five decades or so. He pushes himself off the ground and pours them both a drink instead.

‘I’ll try to remember that. For future… uptight moments.’

Seeker pats himself down, grumbling.  ‘It’s no secret all the birds would be climbing you like a tree, if you weren’t such a fucking stuck up. They all secretly want you. You wouldn’t have to hand out a single Credit, and the birds will still flock.’

‘I can think of far better use of Credits.’

‘Yeah,’ Seeker snorts. ‘You can always give them to me.’

‘Hmmm. And will you turn into a little bird then, and climb me like a tree?’

For a moment the boy flushes and the air around them thickens, before he shakes his head, glaring at Loki and tugging his hood further over his head. ‘Go to hell, why don’t ya. I don’t need to do any of that.’

 _No,_ Loki thinks. _You will never need to enter the darkness again, although enter you will. Your life is not made for happiness, Stark._

‘What will you do instead?’

The boy smirks at him, revealing old traces of himself that makes Loki’s heart ache. ‘Me? I plan to wait for you to make us rich, then slit your throat and take everything for myself.’

‘Hmmm. And after that?’

He watches the boy struggle for nonchalance. ‘Lord knows. Blow this joint. Buy a house on the moon. Run for president.’

‘You’d go back into the cities?’

‘It’s not the same thing. I’d have cars. Hovercrafts. Servants.’

‘A different level of the game is still the game.’

‘There you go again,’ Seeker rolled his eyes above his glass. ‘Killjoy.’

Loki hesitated, before greed spurred him on. ‘Why go back when you can finally escape?’

‘Escape with who? With _you?_ Pleaseeeee.’

Emboldened, he grabs the boy’s arm, pulling him forward. ‘Why not? You know me. A part of you wants to. More than a part, if only you’d stop denying it.’

Toxic eyes stared steadily at him, fearless and unflinching. ‘You're talking crazy again. Let. Go.’

Loki releases him and with a bitter sigh, drifts to the sofa. He knows he shouldn't have spoken thus, but he is tired tonight, the weight of the years bearing down upon him. 

‘You were never meant for cages, little bird. Even the ones built to protect you.’

The glass shatters against the wall behind him, flung with surprising coordination considering how drunk Seeker is. Loki does not even flinch when a shard flies past his cheek, scraping a thin red line across his face. Instead he continues to sip from his glass with slow, deliberate movements as the door slams and the sounds of footsteps vibrated away. 

There is silence. A drop of blood falls on his hand. It is surprisingly arresting.  

Trapped in this life, there is little to differentiate Loki from a ghost, save that he could be a ghost that bleeds. He cherishes this difference.

At least his body could weep, where his heart could not.

A big part of the problem, Loki knows, lies in the fact that the god could read the mortal like a book. It comes with having known so many of Tony’s lives, which can neither be helped nor avoided.  

Seeker _hated_ him for this knowing, and he would neither be the first nor the last. That too, can not be helped or avoided.

The more time progresses, the more Loki knows, the harder and more tenuous the fibers that connected their relationships. It’s a horrible feeling, to have nowhere to hide. Loki knows. He knows the taste of shame like an old friend. 

Seeker – _Tony,_ had asked him once.

In the dark the boy’s eyes were luminous and spent. Confused. ‘Dammit, man. Why are you really here? Tell me who you are.’

'You will not like the answer.'

'Try me.'

A minute passes before Loki finally answers. ‘Once a lover. Once a god. Now a weapon. Now a... friend.’

Faced with yet another obscured and unacceptable answer, the boy had exhaled his disappointment and turned his face away.

‘Riddles again,’ Seeker laughs drunkenly, a vicious mirth tugging at the corners of his lips. ‘Always with these god-dammed _lying riddles_ , man.’

The words embed themselves into his chest, their poison familiar. They have been thrown at him so many times; their meaning never changed.

*

It is common, whenever they argued, for Tony to ask him to leave.

‘Why don’t you just leave, if you can’t stand it, huh? We’re both set up now. We can sign some contractual non-competitive shit and move on. There’s no need to stay together.’

He's wrong. Loki would not, _could not_ leave. Tony might be his only anchor in this world– but it is Loki who must remember for them both.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: Lokitini


	6. Chapter 6

**All that Crumbles is not Dust**

 

6

It happens too soon, the day Loki has learnt to dread more than anything in his long, undying life.

It is a normal day, beautiful even. The skies shine hot and white, shadows retreating into sullen back lanes; a city humming low and contented around them as they made their deliveries. A normal day, a normal job: nothing outstanding or expensive about the briefcases they carry or the people it was meant for.

Illegal yes, certainly. But not special.

Nothing that should have accounted for the band of armed merchants that had surprised them moments before the exchange, opening fire upon everyone in sight.

Loki falls with the rest, having no idea who the assassination attempt had been meant for. Rage surges through him together with a terrible fear, but he needs to buy time to ascertain the intentions of his enemies.

He is foiled however, for the assassins leave instantly, ignoring the four briefcase still attached their victim’s wrist. The briefcases that Loki now suspects would prove be empty.

Loki rises; there is blood pouring down the side of his head, a bullet had gone through his right hip. He winces and crawls to Seeker, lying with his back to the ceiling, still cuffed to his suitcase. A white noise roars in his ears, though it is not the first time he sees Tony shot, no. Neither first nor last.

His heart thuds erratically, painful as bricks hurled against his rib as he turn’s Seeker’s body around to survey the damage. The blood around them coats the floor like paint.

There is something... sandy,  trickling down his throat, from beholding Tony’s shattered body. Hazily, Loki hazards that it must come from the hourglass that had run out on them both.

 _‘Seeker,’_ the god whispers. His feels his heart shatter; again and again.

And again. And yet again.

He lays bloodstained hands on that beloved face, cradles the still-shuddering body to his chest. Seeker’s eyes opens wide, gazing without recognition.

Lips curl bitterly. An entire lifespan lost and found, wasted.

Then suddenly -

The boy exhales harshly, suddenly coming alive with a gasp. He says Loki's name with so much terror and recognition that the god sobs and finally, finally utters the name that he _always_ carries on his lips, yet cannot say.

_'Tony.’_

‘I know you,’ Tony gasps, bloodstain mouth freckling red all over Loki’s face. _‘I know you_ , oh god, _I know you.’_

Ah look, how the mad god weeps openly now; clearly the years had taught him nothing. ‘Tony, I’m here. I’ve always been beside you.’

 _‘All this time?_ All-all-’

Tears pour out of radiated eyes, sparkle like yellow diamonds on his cheeks. Tony’s blown-out irises almost swallow his eyes; greens and yellows, one final bloom of flowers before grave. Emotions colour the face he usually tried so hard to keep in line. Longing. Fear. Sorrow. Disbelief.

‘Hush, it no longer matter,’ Loki comforts him, cradles Tony’s biceps and keeps the boy from further injury whilst his body jerks and spasms. Tony kicks out, claws manically at the air, nails catching the tender flesh on Loki’s face. Tony is dying, drowning in his own blood, and still he tries to reach out to Loki, even as his mortal life-force coats the floor between them.

‘I’m sorry- _I’m so sorry!’_

‘Hush my love, hush.’ He feels Tony’s fingers flutters against his hands and tries not to openly weep at this gift of recognition, restored too late. ‘It is over now. Rest.’

 _‘I waited- I’m so s-sorry.' T_ ony draws a hysterical sob as the god tightens his hold. _'Waited so long.'_

‘Rest. Close your eyes.’ 

Precious seconds pass as Tony’s sobbing finally turns into a wet gurgle. Subsiding.

‘Don’t lea- don’t leave me. _’_

‘I will find you again,’ Loki promises as he combs his fingers through black sweat-drenched hair. ‘I promise. Do not weep at so temporary a parting.’

‘Prom-’

‘I promise. Through this and every lifespan, until the end of time. Until the day the World Tree withers into dust, my Tony, I will not let you go.’

He knows his words have finally penetrated Tony’s panic-fogged mind, because his struggles finally cease. Tony’s eyes finally move beyond the present, looking into worlds unknown. A universe that Loki cannot follow.

‘D-dark. Its dark.’

‘Not so dark, my love. I will follow. I will bring the light.’

Tony sighs and lets go at last, tear tracks glimmering as they pushed down his cheeks to mix with blood and dust.

Finally the boy closes his eyes, eyelashes sooty against his cheek. ‘Love you,’ he mummers with a sigh.

‘And I you.’

Tony’s eyes flicker open again, trying to remember. A frown mars his features briefly, trying to place the face above him.

‘Will you tell me who you are?’ he whispers, and Loki shakes his head, denying the fates. It always starts and ends with these same words. 

‘A god. A lover.’ The god inhales as his voice finally breaks, and he squeezes out the words before his throat closes up completely. ‘Your friend.’

Seeker gives him an incandescent smiles, and breaths his last. He had lived to be a thin, callow youth of no more than twenty, but it was a youthfulness only visible in death, with his mouth no longer turned down and the fine lines between his brow finally eased away.

Loki lowers him gently onto the cement and walks away.

 

*

_Talk what you please of future springs_

_And sun-warmed sweet tomorrows—_

_Stripped bare of hope and everything_

_No more to laugh no more to sing_

_I sit alone with sorrow_

 

*

 

**Epilogue.**

 

_‘Will you tell me who you are?’_

 

It is evening, and there is so much dust in space that the stars look like they have turned out en-mass tonight for Caesar's ball.

Loki swallows the bitter laugh in his chest as the beautiful girl beside him– for she is heart-stoppingly beautiful, remarkable by all standards of time - turns to him with kind and curious eyes. Her dark auburn hair twists freely in the wind, smelling of delicate, out-worldly perfumes.

She has dark skin, the colour of night. She has the same dark lashes of all her previous lives.

Another bird in a cage for Loki to free.

‘Monsieur? Will you tell me who you are?’

Loki turns to face her. She is beautiful. A face that will launch a thousand war ships across the dusky skies. A yet unwritten part to play in Man’s colonization of the stars.

He turns to her with a sweeping bow and says in his elegant voice:

‘My name is Loki, dearest lady. And I’d like very much for us to be friends.’

‘I think I’d like that.’ The girl, balancing oh-so precariously on the cusp of womanhood, smiles at him with all the bold wonder and innocence of her flowering youth. ‘Do you think we shall become good friends then?’

‘I happen to be certain, my lady,’ Loki mummers very softly, tapping a gloved finger against his chin, ‘that we’re going to be very  _best_  of friends.’

 

[fini]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the lines of poetry are from 'A Daughter of Eve', by Christina Rossetti. I have always been fond of her mournful voice. 
> 
> Sad stories, I have realised, will never be popular, but they are where I feel I am most myself - writing from my heart, rather than from a space that wants to please. I'm very happy you chose to be my audience. The creation was precious to me. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
